1. Topical Potential in American Civil and Criminal Court Trials by: Ramia Fu’ad Abdulazez Mirza (Ph.D.)

2. DEFINITION
Topical potential is one of the persuasive aspects of strategic maneuvering. The latter is a somehow recent theory launched by Eemeren and Houtlosser in 2002 to signalize the extended version of the standard pragma-dialectical theory

3. Topical Potential Audience Demand Presentational Devices
Audience Demand Presentational Devices
Figure (1) The Strategic Maneuvering Triangle (Following Eemeren, 2010: 95).

4. Generally speaking, strategic maneuvering involves an arguer's maintaining a balance between being reasonable and effective (that is, persuasive) at the same time to achieve their own goal.

5. More particularly, topical potential means selecting materials from those available on the basis of what arguers believe the best to serve their own advantages. In other words, this aspect implies the process of tailoring the materials available at hand by choosing the allegedly most advantageous ones that accord with one's own aims.

6. One of the stages of a trial, as Mazzi (2007: 25) lists, is Establishing Facts of the Case, where "the circumstances which gave rise to the dispute are described in detail"

7. How can this narration be re-modeled so that it can lend itself to a systematic analysis? Argumentation schemes (also referred to as structures of inference) are the locus wherein the answer resides.

8. WHAT ARE ARGUMENTATION SCHEMES?
Argumentation schemes are binding kinds of reasoning when seen as moves, or speech acts in the setting of dialogue. In this pragmatic framework, two participants are reasoning together in a goal-directed, interactive, conventionalized framework called a dialogue.

9. TYPES OF ARGUMENTATION SCHEMES
Argument from Analogy
Argument from an Established Rule
Argument from Sign
Argument from Position to Know
Argument from Verbal Classification

10. Argument from Commitment
Practical Reasoning
Ad Hominem Argument
Slippery Slope Argument
Argument from Popular Opinion
Argument from Correlation to Cause

11. "inference is a single step of reasoning"

12. WHAT IS REASONING?
Reasoning is what you may do before you argue, and your argument expresses some of your (best) reasoning

13. TYPES OF RESEAONING Deductive Inductive Presumptive Disjunctive
E Contrario

14. INTERSTINGLY, the aforementioned structures of inference (argumentation schemes) are closely related to a well-known concept – fallacies. More specifically, they are related to fallacies which are pragma-dialectically approached, as follows :

15. 1. Argument from analogy
Faulty analogy (Violating Rule 7).
2. Argument from an established rule
All the mentioned fallacies.
3. Argument from sign
Generalizing from too few observations (Violating Rule 7).

16. 4. Argument from position to know
Abuse of authority (Violating Rule 4).
5. Argument from verbal classification
Fallacy of division and/or fallacy of composition (Violating Rule 8).
6. Argument from commitment
Magnifying what has been left unexpressed (Violating Rule 5).

17. 7. Practical reasoning Faulty Reasoning (Violating Rule 8). 8
7. Practical reasoning Faulty Reasoning (Violating Rule 8). 8. Ad hominem argument Ad hominem (Violating Rule 1). 9. Slippery slope argument Slippery slope (Violating Rule 7). 10. Argument from popular opinion Populist fallacy (Violating Rule 7). 11. Correlation to cause argument Various causal fallacies (Violating Rule 7).

18. Topical Potential
AS Reasoning (Fallacies)

19. Example:
MR. PHILLIPS: Well, I think part of the problem is that there -- it is never 100 percent clear precisely who is and who is not an authorized worker. And I think what Congress said was -- I'm not going to deal with this problem in the kind of granular way you're looking at it, Justice Scalia, which is specifically at each of the individual employment decisions.

20. 1. ASs: The AS which is employed in this part is argument from verbal classification. More precisely, the vague nature of this scheme has been exploited to produce this part of the maneuver. This is supported by what Philips says: "it is never 100 percent clear precisely who is and who is not an authorized worker…", the matter which Walton (2002: 52) has previously discussed.
2. Reasoning: Employing argument from verbal classification requires deductive reasoning as the kind which is at focus in this part of the maneuver. :
- Worker authorization is never 100 percent clear.
- A part in the State statute is about worker authorization.
- Therefore, that part of the State statute is never 100 percent clear.
3. Fallacy: No fallacy has been committed as no rule of reasonableness has been violated

21. THANK YOU

22. YOUR QUESTIONS ARE VERY WELCOME